Yesterday, I talked about my shopping anxiety. It’s tough sometimes with my height and dimensions so mostly I do online shopping so I can try it on and return it.
I arrived at the mall at 10:45 and after shopping there and a store on my return, I was home at 3pm. I was pretty tired and hungry!
My first stop had been at Ambercrombie & Fitch to try on some styles of pants and return one or two of the pairs on got online. I returned one pair, and purchased two more online at the store. Of course they don’t carry Extra Short at the store. I think I really wanted only one pair but I got confused, so maybe I’ll return one of them. Pants were my only objective there.
Then on to J.C. Penney’s which has a pretty robust Petite section. They are always tucked away in some corner like a dirty little secret! I carried about 10 items into the dressing room which was, of course, all the way on the other side of the Women’s Department. I found 2 pairs of pants, and two sweaters – one a pullover with a marled wool. It’s very simple and I know I could actually knit it myself but this is a faster method of getting new clothes, know what I mean? The other sweater was a cardigan, with beige and blue strips.
It’s helpful that the colors of the season, colors of 2026, are grays, olives, maroons, and dark blues because those are the colors that came up when I did my colors via Chat GPT! I am Autumn. I think we must shift as we age because I always leaned toward whites, pinks, and light colors when I was younger. Or maybe they were the colors of the season back then? Who knows? I noticed the gradual shift for in the early 2000s, when I suddenly fell in love with the color green. More olive based greens.
Anyway, It was on to Marshalls where I know I can usually pick up some decent tops and I was successful. The trend is back with rugby shirt style sweaters and collared short sleeve sweaters. I look at one and thought I was back in 1974! I did not buy it. I bought a sweater that has the attached collar and shirt tail hanging down. I was thinking of cutting off the shirt tail, but my husband said he liked it, so I’ll give it a shot. Women’s styles are big on me, unless they are petite so I moseyed over to the Junior section and found a short sleeve sweater in light sage and a gray wool sweater that dips in the back. They fit better in the length and are $3 to $10 less expensive than in the women’s department (not the same items though!).
So I carried all my purchases home, showed them to my husband, then brought them upstairs and took pictures to send to my sisters. I had been sending them text messages and pictures throughout my journey so I wanted them to see my haul.
I spent another hour switching out my warm weather clothing with my cold weather clothing – one closet to another – and actually putting some items into the goodwill bin I keep because I didn’t wear them this summer.
We all have our favorite articles of clothing but sometimes I carry mine on for too long. 20 years? Too long! I want to make a point to take some time to go shopping because after the anxiety of planning it, I did feel better.
